Never think Ads is a waste of time, too expensive or too competitive. Google Ads is such a powerful tool to help grow your business! Once you understand how Google Ads work and tips on how to use it more efficiently, you will see your profits and business leads soar!
This post will help you understand how to use Google Ads more efficiently and will give you tips on how to maximise the platform for your business. It will help shift your struggling campaign into a business booming utensil!
Where Most New Advertisers Go Wrong in Google Search Ads
Many first-time advertisers trip up by launching campaigns without solid conversion tracking, so they have no clear picture of what actually drives leads or sales. They often leave keywords in broad match and forget to add negative keywords, which lets the budget leak away on irrelevant searches.
This post will focus on:
- Using keywords efficiently
- Ads variations and assets
- How to increase sales with minimum exertion
- Bids and Budget, select the appropriate strategy and campaign type and structure
- Set up conversions by adding at least one high-value action to track, such as a form submission or purchase
- Landing pages – load speed & message match
Learn how to be aggressive, make more money and beat your competitors through your Google Ads campaign!
Campaign Type and Structure Your Ad Groups for Better Performance
In this paragraph, we’ll focus on Google Search Ads, the most popular and oldest campaign type in Google Ads. It’s often the most profitable option for small to medium-sized businesses, and it’s also the best starting point for beginners. If you’re just launching your first campaign, Search Ads are a great way to reach people who are actively looking for your products or services.
Avoid Keyword Overload
One of the most common mistakes in Google Ads campaigns is putting too many unrelated keywords into a single ad group. While Google allows up to 20,000 keywords per ad group, that doesn’t mean you should use them all. For better control and relevance, it’s best to use around 3–10 closely related keywords per ad group.
Group your keywords by theme or category. For example, if you’re running a campaign for pool fencing, a well-structured ad group might include: “pool fencing”, “pool fence”, “custom pool fencing,” and “pool fencing near me.” If you’re targeting a location, you can also include keywords like “pool fencing Sydney.”
Keywords Type
One mistake beginners often make is using Broad Match right away. While it’s the default in Google Ads, Broad Match can quickly drain your budget on irrelevant searches, especially in a new account without much data.
Start with Exact and Phrase Match keywords. Once you’ve collected some solid data, you can test Broad Match in a separate ad group.
Not Using Enough Negative Keywords
If you don’t add negative keywords, your ads might show for completely unrelated searches, like people looking for “free” services or “jobs.” This leads to wasted clicks and higher costs.
This approach helps your ads match more closely with the search terms people use, improving your Quality Score, ad relevance, and ultimately, campaign performance. Instead of using one ad to cover many unrelated searches, you’re giving each ad a clear focus, leading to better results without wasting budget.
What you will get:
- Higher quality score
- Higher relevancy and conversion rates
- Lower costs per click and per conversion
- Increased sales and profits
Creating Effective Google Ads and Ad Assets for Search Campaigns
For each ad group, it’s best to create 1–2 responsive search ads along with 1 call ad if phone calls are important for your business. All ads should be highly relevant to your landing page and target keywords.
Make sure you select the right headlines and fill in all available ad assets. These can include:
- Images (if using display or performance assets)
- Business logo
- Sitelinks
- Callouts (highlight unique features or offers)
- Location extensions (especially if local visibility matters)
- Call extensions (if you want users to call directly)
No or Bad Conversion Tracking
If you don’t set real goals like sales, phone calls, or form leads, Google’s Smart Bidding has nothing to work with and your reports won’t mean much either. Also, your campaign strategy like Maximise Conversions or Target CPA won’t work properly without solid conversion data. You need to add at least one high-value conversion and test it yourself, fill in the form or make a test sale to make sure it’s tracking.
I recommend setting up Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, then connecting them with your website. After that, you need to link your Google Ads account with your Google Analytics account to track performance properly and send conversion data back to Google Ads.
Don’t Ignore Quality Score Signals and Landing Page
One thing you can’t afford to ignore in Google Ads is Quality Score. It’s based on ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected click-through rate (CTR). If your score is low, your cost-per-click goes up and your ads show less often.
That’s why it’s important to make sure your keywords, ad headlines, and descriptions match the content on your landing page. Keep the message clear and consistent. Make sure your keyword appears in the page headline (H1), meta title, and early in the content. Also, check the page load speed—slow pages hurt your performance.
Your landing page plays a big role in the success of your campaign. If you want to learn more, check out our blog post:
Creating Landing Pages That Convert – Tips for Aussie Businesses
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”
David Ogilvy – Founder of Ogilvy and Mather
“The Father of Advertising”
Utilise your Call to Action’s
To help market your ad, you need to utilise Call to Action’s which attract your customers and radiate with importance! This is another easy and simple way to improve your ad performance rates.
Your CTA’s need to give your customers the desire to click!
To do this, you need to understand how to attract your customers. You do this by dividing your CTA’s to customer who are ready to buy and just looking. By understand the different needs, you can adapt your CTA to catch the eye of each type of customer.
If customers are ready to buy, entice them with offers and discounts. If customers are just looking, attract them with guides and quizzes. Free consultations, coupons, custom pricing, live demos and phone calls are always a good starting point for customers who are ready to buy. Quizzes, How to Guides, E-books and Statistics are good for customers who are window shopping.
It’s all about understanding your customer!
Target the Right People at the Right Time
One mistake that beginners often make is not setting up location and time targeting properly. If you don’t do this, your ads might show in areas you don’t even service, or during hours when people can’t call, visit, or take action.
When setting up your campaign, go to the Locations section and choose “Presence” only, not “Presence or interest”, you only want to target people who are actually in your target area. Also, use ad scheduling to make sure your ads show during your business hours or when your audience is most active.
All this data prevents you from wasting time and money! They are here to increase your sales and profits!
“Your object in all advertising is to buy new customers at a price which pays a profit. You have no interests in garnering trade at any particular store. Learn what your customers cost and what they buy. If they cost you one dollar each, figure that every wasted dollar costs you a potential customer”.
Claude C Hopkins – Advertising Pioneer
Don’t Let Google Make Changes Without Telling You
If you leave Google’s auto-apply recommendations turned on, it can start making changes to your account without you even knowing. It might add new keywords, change your bidding strategy, or even pause your ads — and not always in a way that helps your campaign.
To stay in control, go to Account Settings → Ad Suggestions and turn off auto-apply. You should always check the Recommendations tab manually and decide for yourself what’s worth applying. This way, you know exactly what’s running in your campaign.
Keep Your Campaigns on Track
You should check your Google Ads campaigns weekly or every second week, depending on your budget, performance, and how long the campaign has been running. If it’s a new campaign or you’re spending more, check it more often.
Here’s a simple way to remember what to look at — the 5 × 2 rule:
Five key areas, two checks each week:
- Keywords – review search terms & add negatives
- Ads – test variations & make sure assets are complete
- Bids/Budget – check against your CPA or ROAS targets & review lost impression share
- Conversions – make sure tracking is working & values are correct
- Landing pages – check page speed & make sure the message matches your ad
If you follow this routine, your Search campaigns will perform better, stay efficient, and avoid wasting your budget.
